Then, finally I said, ‘OK.’” (Jane and Waricha founded Parachute Publishing, which also published the Goosebumps and Fear Street series for a time.) We have to try it.’ And I didn’t want to do it,” he told TODAY. “My editors, my wife and her partner, said, ‘No one’s ever done a series for 7- to 11-year-old, scary books. Stine’s wife, Jane, is the editor of the Goosebumps series-and she and her business partner, Joan Waricha, were the ones who convinced him to do it in the first place. Stine didn’t want to do Goosebumps-but his editors convinced him. “I was always afraid of a lot of things, which later came in handy, of course, because I could remember that feeling of panic, that feeling of what it feels like to be a frightened kid,” the author told TODAY.

Stine found inspiration for his scary stories in his own childhood. Stine wasn’t always scary: Before hitting it big with horror, he dabbled in comedy, writing for a humor magazine at Ohio State University and published more than 100 joke books under the pen name “Jovial Bob.” But the first horror book he wrote, Blind Date, was a bestseller, which caused him to switch genres. Get Goosebumps! Scholastic 20th Anniversary Celebration / Slaven Vlasic/GettyImages Stine's own childhood inspires his scary stories. And of course there’s a punchline at the end of every chapter.” 3. So anytime a scene gets really intense, I throw in something funny. I just figured I don’t really want to scare these kids. “But by the second book, Stay out of the Basement, I got it. “I didn’t have the right combination yet-it doesn’t have the humor,” he recently told Time magazine. With Welcome to Dead House, a tale of undead children trying to recruit more for their ranks, Stine didn’t have his now-famous macabre humor quite nailed. Stine thinks the first Goosebumps book is too scary. It wasn’t long before one Goosebumps book was being released every month. It was entirely the secret kids network,” Stine told The Boston Globe in 2015. “It was kids discovering the books and kids telling kids. A new book was released every two months, and after the first few, word-of-mouth among kids made them a hit. Stine was originally contracted for just four Goosebumps books.Īnd at first, they weren’t very successful, largely because there was no advertising or marketing. July 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the first book in the series, Welcome to Dead House here are 11 facts to help you celebrate. Stine first scared the pants off kids with his delightfully spooky Goosebumps series, now one of the best-selling children’s series of all time with more than 400 million books in print internationally.

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